In the Company of Vampires (34 page)

“I bring unto you captured images of many large-breasted women,” Isleif said, presenting the magazine.

“Bah,” Loki said, looking down his long narrow nose at Isleif. “I have many such magazines.”

“This one has twin double-D cups in the centerfold,” Isleif pointed out.

Loki’s lips pursed as he took the magazine. “I accept this gift. What else have you brought me?”

Ben laughed in my head.

“We have the chocolate most fine, hewn by many peasants in the Toblerone province,” Finnvid said as he offered up the now yard-high stick of chocolate.

Loki looked at it, then at Finnvid. “Someone has eaten half of my chocolate sacrifice.”

“Turks,” Finnvid said without batting so much as one single eyelash. “Turks tried to take your fine sacrifice, many Turks, clad in the finest steel, riding elephants, and with legions of bowmen, but we slayed them and retrieved your sacrifice before they could completely consume it.”

“Turks love chocolate,” Loki said darkly, taking the giant candy bar. “All right, I accept your offerings. Since it is clearly your wish to humiliate me before my descendant, you will tell me now what it is that you desire of me.”

“I’m not humiliating you before Tesla!” I objected. “He’s not even awake! He’s dozing!”

We all looked at the horse. It was true his eyes were half open, but he had that dreamy look that told me he was enjoying a little horsey nap.

“It is true that my descendant looks well,” Loki admitted. “But I expected nothing else when I arranged for him to be taken into the care of a high priestess of Ashtar.”

“Mikaela?” I asked. “You arranged for it? I don’t think so. I had her and Ramon take Tesla when they decided to leave Circus of the Darned to become farmers.”

“Who do you think urged them to do so?” Loki asked with a self-satisfied smirk. “I did not trust you, a mere child, to see to the welfare of my descendant. But a priestess of the Asatru is a different matter. Tesla is well. I am content to have him remain here.”

“Good, because that’s what
I
arranged,” I snapped, then remembered that it wasn’t good to lose one’s temper with a god. “We’ve gotten off track. You asked what I want of you, and I’ll tell you—I want my mother back, so you can just stop seducing her now.” I straightened my shoulders in an attempt to look like the sort of person who routinely summoned gods to do her bidding. “And don’t tell me you haven’t done so, because I know for a fact you’ve been stirring up all sorts of trouble, like trying to kidnap me, but getting my roommate, Geoff, instead.”

You’ll tell me now,
Ben answered in an inflexible tone that would have rankled if I wasn’t trying to keep control of a pissed-off Norse god.

Loki continued to look speculatively at me, his gaze sharp and calculating. “I swore to take from you that which you most valued, and I did so. You suffered much—that I know—and it pleased me. If you have continued to suffer, it is not by my doing, although that, too, pleases me. It is interesting, however, that the Vikingahärta did not protect you as you believed it must. Perhaps it has tired of you and is willing to return to me. You will give it to me now.”

“Whoa, hold on there,” I said as Loki took a step forward. Ben did likewise until the two men were just a foot apart, glaring at each other.
He already took something from me? What does he mean? What did he take?

I don’t know for certain, but I am beginning to suspect.
“Do not approach my Beloved without her permission.”

Loki gave him a jaded look. “Do you think you can stop me, Dark One?”

“I think I can make a damned good attempt, yes,” Ben said calmly, although there was an underlying note of steel in his voice that made Loki hesitate.

“What did you take from me?” I asked, letting go of Tesla to stand next to Ben, my fingers brushing his until he took my hand. “How did you make me suffer?”

He gave me a look that mocked my questions. “I am Loki the Trickster, brother of Odin, and member of the Aesir. I do not need to explain anything to a mere human.”

“Well, I think you’re going to have to explain to this human, because I don’t know what it is you took from me. I don’t recall losing anything I valued except my backpack, and I haven’t so much suffered because of that as I have been annoyed.”

“It is not material things that he stole from you,” Ben said slowly, his eyes a lightish oak color as they considered Loki.

“Then what?” I asked, puzzled.

I was about to answer that he knew full well I hadn’t been, when it struck me what he was implying.

“You took love from me.” Enlightenment flooded my poor excuse for a brain. “You took the love of my mother and Ben from me by driving me from them, didn’t you? You made me miserable for five whole years!”

Loki smiled a smug smile that I wanted to smack off his face. “I told you that I would have my revenge. Watching you suffer for the last few years has been worth all it has cost me to keep a glamour on you for an entire year.”

“It was a glamour that made everyone drive me crazy?” I asked, stunned by the depths of his machinations. “Is that why everyone—Ben and Imogen and even my mother—was insisting I do what they wanted?”
Is that possible? Casting a glamour on someone for a year, I mean.

Still . . .
I took a deep breath and lifted my chin. “Where is my mother, Loki Laufeyiarson?”

“That you would have to ask Frigga, for I do not know your mother’s fate,” he said with a return of his haughtiness. “Give me the Vikingahärta, and I will let you live in peace.”

I sighed.
I’m going to have to touch him, aren’t I?

It would probably be the easiest way to determine whether or not he is lying,
Ben agreed, his fingers tightening around mine when my stomach clenched at the thought of opening myself up to Loki.
I am here, Francesca. I will not allow any harm to come to you.

It is always nice to hear it,
I said as I pulled off my gloves.
No sun in there?

The sun and I do not get along,
he said with a wry little smile.

“You want the Vikingahärta? You got it.” I held it out, and when he reached for it, I shoved it into his hand, allowing my fingertips to brush his palm. For the space between seconds, I was in the world of Loki. It was a scary place, and left me with the feeling that my hair was standing on end, but one thing was made absolutely clear to me—he wasn’t lying about my mother. He truly did not know where she was.

“Ah, it is as I thought,” Loki said with a fat smile as he beheld the Vikingahärta lying on his hand. “It has returned to me of its own will. I knew the day—” He stopped, frowning. The Vikingahärta didn’t burst into a bright light as it had the last time he touched it, but I felt a slight vibration inside me that seemed to come from it. To our collective amazement, the triangles that made up the valknut shifted for a second time, causing Loki to yelp as he dropped it.

He glared at it for a few seconds before transferring the glare to me. “Perhaps I am not finished with you as I thought to have been.”

Instantly four big, bulky men blocked my view of him.

“Ben! Eirik! Move!” I protested as they and Finnvid and Isleif put themselves between Loki and me.

He is threatening you. I will not stand for that.
“You heard her—move,” Ben told the Vikings, scowling at them. “I will protect Francesca.”

“She is our goddess,” Eirik told him with a matching scowl.

“She’s my Beloved. That trumps your goddess.”

“Oh, for Pete’s sake . . .” I shoved aside Eirik, glared at Isleif until he stepped back, and shot Ben a look that he chose to ignore. The field in front of him was empty of all but the Vikingahärta lying on the grass. “Great. Now Loki’s gone, and I didn’t get to ask him who would want to seduce my mother, not to mention banish him like Freya wanted, not that I think I could.”

“I doubt if he would have told you the truth, assuming he knew it,” Ben answered as I picked up the Vikingahärta, touching the three triangles with the tip of a finger. They felt just the same to me, and yet different somehow, as if the power it possessed had shifted when its physical form did.

“He didn’t know where Mom was—that I know,” I said, lifting my gaze to his. “Ben, what are we going to do? If he isn’t behind my mother running off, who is? And how are we going to find her?

“I think we’re going to have to consult a source that has been hidden to you,” he answered, the words portentous.

“What source?” The image of a black-haired man came to mind. “Alphonse de Marco, you mean? I thought we decided that he couldn’t have anything to do with Mom?”

“Not him,” Ben said thoughtfully, rubbing his chin.

I looked into his mind, my eyes widening as I saw what it was thinking. “Petra?”

His arm was warm around me as he steered me out of the pasture, toward Mikaela’s house, the Vikings falling into step behind us. “I think it’s time we locate your half sister.”

“You know, for a man who used to ride around in carriages, and probably wondered at the amazing technology of gunpowder and steam engines, you are awfully Internet-savvy,” I remarked an hour later as we sat at Mikaela’s kitchen table, hunkered over Ramon’s laptop. “It didn’t take you very long at all to find her. But what’s Mom’s other daughter doing in Paris? Her birth certificate says she was born in California just like me.”

“Evidently she’s living on rue de la Grande Pest.”

“Street of the big plague?” I asked, my French being rather limited.

“Yes.” His eyebrows rose. “Odd.”

“What is?”

“That’s where G and T is located.”

“What’s G and T?”

“Goety and Theurgy,” Ramon answered as he took a seat with little Fran. He’d arrived home about twenty minutes before, surprised but pleased to see Ben and me . . . and a little less enthusiastic to find the three Vikings raiding his kitchen.

“Black and white magic? Is it some sort of school or something?”

“Nightclub,” Ben said, tapping on the keyboard. “A very popular one. Everyone who’s anyone goes there. I’m surprised Imogen didn’t take you there when you were traveling with the Faire.”

“Are you kidding? My mother barely let me go to museums on my own. She never let me go out with Imogen at night. She thought Imogen would try to hook me up with guys.” I gave Ben a twisted smile. “As if.”

“She is going by the name Petra Valentine, not de Marco,” Ben remarked as he continued to poke around in an online database of personal information. “That’s what took me so long to find her. Evidently she’s living with some relatives by the name of Valentine. They have a business, Valentine and Company, located on rue de la Grande Pest, but I can’t ascertain just what sort of a business it is.”

“If her father is an Ilargi, maybe she’s one, too,” Mikaela suggested, watching with dismay as the Vikings stuffed a variety of bowls into a small microwave.

“I’ll pay for whatever it is they eat,” I told her in an undertone.

“Don’t be ridiculous—you pay us very generously for Tesla’s board. It’s just that I will have nothing to give you for dinner if they eat everything.”

“The position of Ilargi isn’t a hereditary one,” her husband told her, peering over Ben’s shoulder as best he could with little Fran demanding he read her a story from the book she held.

“Maybe she’s normal, like me,” I said.

Everyone looked at me, including the Vikings.

“Perhaps
normal
wasn’t the best term,” I said somewhat lamely.

“She has a Wiccan mother and an Ilargi father,” Ben said in a dry tone. “I suspect she is anything but mundane.”

Mundane
, I remembered from my time with the Faire, was the Otherworld term for normal mortal beings. It was a word I once cherished, wishing with my whole being that I could be perfectly ordinary, just like everyone else. My gaze slid to Ben, caressing the hard planes of his face, softened now as he focused on the laptop, the sweet curve of his lower lip curling a little as Ramon made a joke about mundane folk. I was filled with a profound sense of rightness, a warm glow of love that made me wonder how I could ever believe life would exist without Ben.